


where i begin|where you end

by hitlikehammers



Series: wait for me [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'Til the end of the line, Adventures with the Stupid Punk with No Sense Of Self-Preservation: A Memoir By Bucky Barnes, Civil War Fix-It, Codependency, Emotional Sex, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Supersoldiers in Love, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:04:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Bucky blinks, his gaze tormented.</i>
</p><p>  <i>“I never wanted—”</i></p><p>  <i>“What? You never wanted me to love you this much? To hold you this close in me, to make you so much a part of why I bothered to keep breathing when breathing was too goddamn <span class="u">hard</span>?” Steve challenges. “<span class="u">You’re</span> what I learned was worthwhile in the world,” Steve tells him truly, and watches as new tears, different tears, gather in those blown-wide eyes. “Years, Buck. <span class="u">Years</span> ago, I learned that what mattered was made of you.” Steve draws him in, and tries to press all that single truth means into Bucky’s lips, tries to burn his soul into the touch between them both.</i></p><p>  <i>“You don’t ever unlearn something that real,” Steve vows; “I wouldn’t ever <span class="u">want</span> to.”</i></p><p> </p><p>In which Bucky and Steve are free to start a life together, finally. But not before some <i>frustrations</i> about Steve's choice to go on ice are worked through. <span class="small"><s>In bed.</s></span></p><p>  <b>Final Installment of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/506763">wait for me</a>.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	where i begin|where you end

**Author's Note:**

> And here, we come to the end for this tale of these beautiful boys. I hope it feels like it came full circle. Thank you all for coming on this journey and being so kind with your feedback along the way.
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5y-gsKRaw). 
> 
> As ever: love to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/) <3

No one would really suspect that it hurts for a while, after. Like the first scrape of frostbite, lingering. Like cold hands under boiling water—pins and needles.

Steve does his goddamn level best not to think about all the times it’s happened to Bucky, how many times this feeling has plagued the man he loves, splayed on top of him, flesh and blood and breathing. Steve does his level best not to think that Bucky’s heart tingled and ached like this as it slowly learned rhythm, learned beating again.

“Still fuckin’ pissed at you, asshole.”

Bucky’s mouth is hot against Steve’s chest where he’s collapsed after god knows how many rounds, minutes, hours of frantic touching and sobbing and shaking and cursing and letting Steve know just what he fucking thought of Steve deciding _cryo_ was a fucking good idea, but Jesus _Christ_ , how Bucky loved him and fuck all, _come here you fucking punk_—

And so forth. 

But Steve’s heart’s starting to shake off the last of the frost, starting to melt icicle-daggers before they can fall and pierce something vital in him, in _them_ , for the hot press of Bucky’s mouth against the pounding, through the skin. So hell if he gives a damn about any of it, about anything, so long as there’s _Bucky_ , and they’re warm, and they’re safe.

And they’re _here_.

“I couldn’t do it, Buck,” Steve finally breathes into the sweat-mussed strands of Bucky’s hair, tousled more times over now than Steve can count. 

“I know you better’n that, Steven Grant,” Bucky rests his chin on Steve’s sternum; looks up at him, gaze narrowed to a point. “You don’t even know what that word _means_. Ain’t nothin’ in the world you _can’t_ do.”

“You don’t know, Buck,” Steve shakes his head, and buries his hand into Bucky’s hair, pressure on the back of his to escape the pin of that stare for just a second, even if it only just presses Bucky’s closer to his heavy-pumping pulse: either route giving him away. “You don’t know how it _hurt_ —”

“You think I don’t know?” Bucky snaps; props himself up, and Steve can’t help the sharp keen, the visceral protest of his heart against his ribs at the loss of heat and life and _proof_ against his flesh. “You think I’ve never felt that?”

Steve just stares at him, and reminds himself to breathe for the fire in Bucky’s eyes, for the fight in his limbs: for the heart Steve can pick up the threads of where it pounds loud enough for superhuman ears to find and hold onto. 

“Every winter,” Bucky hisses, and the flame that grows, that blazes brighter with every word, every syllable—much as Steve suspects it’s meant to cut, and it does, but for all it’s meant to cut, even more than that, it sets him alight. Because that is _Bucky_ in those eyes, in those words. It is Bucky, here. With Steve.

It is _Bucky_.

“Every frost, every too-hot summer’s day when the air was too thick for even me to breathe but you,” and it’s Bucky’s voice that catches. It’s Bucky’s faces that crumples at the memory before he can school it back to fierce.

“And then, watching everyone fawn over you,” Bucky’s voice goes low, bitter at the edges, and Steve can’t bring himself to blink, can’t risk missing a second of this spectacle in front of him, this miracle come true. 

“Watching you light up because they _saw_ you, and not one of ‘em deserved to, because they saw the outside, they didn’t hold the _inside_ close like their own heart beating, you—”

Bucky cuts off, breathless, livid, wanting: Steve can’t help himself—he surges up, presses chest to chest again and breathes. 

Breathes lips to lips again and _loves_.

And Bucky doesn’t stop him; doesn’t do a damn thing but wrap arms around Steve’s waist and pull him in closer, shift to wrap his legs around Steve’s middle and curls his thighs in tight to bring Steve against him all the nearer, all the more desperate and Steve goes willingly, doesn’t need to be caged by those limbs but welcomes the feeling, the safety, the tangible reminder that this is real, that they are real, that the heat and soft wetness at Steve’s neck is Bucky’s breathing, that the unrepentant tapping at his breastbone is the blood in Bucky’s veins giving life: Steve doesn’t need to be caged to be held that close, to be kept that dear.

Steve would give years of his life just to feel that way, for whatever time he’s got left.

“And knowing it was gone forever,” Bucky nips into Steve’s lips, gasps the twisting in his soul that’s clear inside the words straight into Steve’s mouth as he tightens his legs around Steve all the tighter: “Knowing, and…”

And nothing, save for Bucky’s tongue tracing Steve’s mouth, reminding every inch of it what it feels like to be adored for every attention lavished and the tenderness left behind as Steve moans and Bucky plunders deeper, more and more unforgiving, unflagging, unfailing: hips rolling in time with the thrust of that tongue, the bite of Steve’s lips and god, but Steve can feel the racing of his blood pooling lower, lower, _harder_ —

“And then,” Bucky gasps, sucks hard against the corner of Steve’s mouth, the line of his jaw: “even if my body was breathing, even when I remembered, when I could _think_ before they took it away, to know you were _gone_ , to know it was over and done, I—”

Bucky buries his face in the crook of Steve’s neck and breathes heavy, presses his weight against Steve’s still-tender skin, still sparking nerves as he bites, figurative in the sound and physical in the scrape of lips:

“You think I don’t _know_?”

And Steve trembles with everything that isn’t said in those words; that isn’t said but that floats through his flesh and in between his bones and settles like lead dust, toxic and beautiful and heavy and soft against his fluttering heart.

“I ain’t never broke a promise to you, Steve,” Bucky breathes, present and horrible and perfect like a living thing: “not a goddamn _one_.”

Steve feels the way Bucky swallows, the way it shivers through his body at a touch before he lifts his chin and meets Steve’s eye, anger and heartbreak and other kinds of brokenness—trust, maybe, and that may be the worst of it.

“I _swore_ this wasn’t gonna be goodbye,” Bucky wrings out a whine for it, moans through it: Steve hurts for it, because he knows what Bucky sees: lack of trust. He knows that Bucky sees the only thing that could never have touched what Steve chose to do, how Steve chose to be, and not to be.

What he wouldn’t be _without_.

Steve shakes his head: slow at first, and then quicker. Desperate. 

“I know,” Steve tells him, tries to fit in two words all the feeling, all the needing, all the hurting and all that it wasn’t about what Bucky couldn’t be or wasn’t trusted to keep, but what _Steve_ couldn’t be, and wasn’t enough to withstand. “I know, I just...”

He trails off, and holds Bucky’s face in both his hands to keep him close, to root them both, to keep from shaking. 

“You think I’m strong, Buck,” Steve confesses, barely a whisper. “But I was only ever strong because I had you in my corner. ‘Cause I had you by my side. And I snuck around, gave the people I needed to the slip, used what _you_ taught me, that I never had to use before because you were there to back up my mouth, and sure,” Steve’s voice cracks, hitched up too high, too thin.

“Sure, I put on a good show, but stick me toe-to-toe with anything worth its fucking salt, without _you_? Shit, Buck, I’m not, I ain’t worth—”

“Shut up.”

Bucky’s voice is harsh, Bucky’s eyes are wet. Bucky’s chest is heaving when he snarls:

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Steve.”

Steve shuts up. He can feel his heart pounding.

He can feel Bucky’s, too. He thinks this feeling is the best thing, the very best of all things, despite the way it burns.

“You went under,” Bucky hisses, sobs—mourns, rages and aches, and Steve feels it like a blow to his beating blood, sending it broken all out of place; “you _chose_ to, to…”

“I chose to be with _you_ ,” Steve gathers Bucky’s hands at the center of his chest and kisses the tips with all the soul he has inside him, with all the soul Bucky’s pressed back into his body, his being. 

“You said you needed your heart happy,” Steve’s speaks into Bucky’s fingerprints: “If you weren’t lyin’, if you meant it when you said your heart was _me_ ,” and Steve’s chest clenches, his lungs twist: 

“Bucky, I _can’t_ be happy without you.”

And Bucky’s breath comes heavy, harsh—he sucks in breath like there’s no more breath in the world and Steve just holds to him harder, like it could matter, like maybe it matters.

Like _they_ have to _matter_.

“And if bigger than that, you needed your _heart_ ,” Steve begs, doesn’t bother fighting his tears; “it wasn’t gonna stand _being_ without you,” and that’s true, that’s the truest thing in the world save for the simpler truth inside it: Steve loves Bucky.

That truth is bigger than the sun. 

“‘Cause Bucky,” Steve murmurs, breathes; “it’s smart, this thing, and it _feels_ something _fierce_ ,” and Bucky turns their hands, still on his chest, so they cover that smart, fierce, feeling thing as it moves, proves it’s there, still _there_ : smart. Fierce. 

He presses their hands all the closer so they can both feel the way that it’s _feeling_.

“And it knew there was no reason to keep goin’ on without you,” Steve whispers. “It’d tried, and learned quick there wasn’t anything to it, wasn’t anything _in_ it, that it was fuckin’ pointless to keep going on its own. You gotta know, you have to,” Steve’s shaking, and his heart’s shaking too. “ _Buck_ —”

“I told you to _live_ , goddamnit,” Bucky huffs out, hot enough to burn and harsh enough to tear against the hollow of Steve’s throat. “God _damnit_ , Steve.”

Steve holds him, holds him: just holds him, until his heart’s as steady as it’s going to get before he speaks:

“I’m not sorry.”

He can’t, he _won’t_ lie. Not about this.

Bucky huffs.

“‘Course you ain’t,” he says, and Steve’s broken blood leaps a little at the lilt to it, the promise of humor, the undeniability of affection, of the love that keeps that blood bounding after all the pain, after all this time. “But I’m still pissed, I’m still, I can’t, you—”

Bucky lifts up, and grips Steve’s hips on instinct. Hard.

“You’re not gettin’ out of this one, punk,” he almost growls. And Steve feels the heart in him, the blood in him, the bones in him start to tremble, start to feel wholly thawed and set aflame as Bucky’s gaze upon him narrows, weighs down—pure intent, and for all the times they’ve touched and held and felt and filled one another in just the last hours, this is different.

This pins Steve down like a butterfly by the wings, with his heart shaking, but flying: no fear in it.

Just _want_.

And Bucky bares teeth as he lifts up, one practiced motion, swift and all grace as he pivots, cants hips, and takes Steve’s length inside him in a single press, until the swell of his ass is tight against Steve’s balls, until Steve’s a part of him again, inside of him again: completely at his disposal, at his mercy.

Completely _his_.

Steve whimpers as Bucky grips him, slides both hands, metal and flesh and exactly the same heat to them both: Bucky grips him at the shoulder blades and positions him exactly as he wishes, all the while lifting himself off of Steve’s prick to the point where it’s not quite a tease any longer and instead more a punishment, a pain in Steve’s chest at the threat of the loss—but then he sinks down again, full and breath-stealing and Steve gasps without the promise of air left to him, and he’s boneless save for Bucky’s hands on him, Bucky’s heat around him, save for Bucky pulling too much feeling from him, body and soul and he shivers with every thrust he can’t control, with every gift and denial of Bucky surrounding him entirely: he’s boneless; useless.

Save for Bucky.

“God,” Bucky moans, resonant in Steve’s lungs, in the marrow of his bones; “ _god_ , Stevie.”

“Buck,” Steve gasps, short and faint and hard; “Bucky, I—”

“Fucking _punk_ ,” Bucky pants, but there’s a sharpness to it that shouldn’t be possible, shouldn’t be able to fit inside the breathlessness.

“Never blinked to take care of yourself, never thought about keeping _yourself_ breathin’,” and Bucky’s voice falters, chokes off as the friction, the rhythm stutters in kind, as Steve’s hands slide upward from Bucky’s sides and smooth over the pounding of his heart before they rest on his shoulders, steady as he can make them until Bucky bites out:

“Never bothered to worry about the people who’d stop breathing _with_ you.”

And there’s so much hurt, there. So much sadness and heartache and the scar tissue of too many close calls, too many times Steve knows the truth of those words plunged glass and ice straight through Bucky’s chest and he had been reckless, yes. He had been stupid.

But Bucky’d loved him anyway.

“Buck,” Steve breathes out, because it’s the only word that encompasses enough feeling to fit the moment, to even begin to fit everything Steve needs to make known. “I’m—”

“How could you? How _could_ you?” Bucky demands of him as he raises up and sinks hard, fast, rough on Steve’s dick, over and again until the slap of skin is almost loud enough to drown out the sound of a pulse. “Don’t know what’s good for you, you _never knew_ what was _good_ for you—”

“I always knew,” Steve manages to wring out, manages to catch Bucky’s eyes, frantic and wild as he rides out a punishing pace to the close as Steve brings his hands around the back of Bucky’s neck and clasps them tight, holds on hard and manage to bite out the truth with the last half-steady breaths in him: 

“Always fucking _knew_.”

And Bucky’s hands slam down on Steve’s chest, rattle his ribs and draw sharp pain from his overly sensitized nipples as Bucky braces his weight against him and sets his nerves ablaze as he somehow finds a way to ride Steve harder, deeper: to tease out Steve’s soul where he breaches, where he finds solace in Bucky amidst the wrecking of their bodies, here and now as they gasp and wince and give.

“Stupid fucking _punk_ ,” Bucky croaks, cries, as he tightens his thighs and lifts all the way off Steve, who moans in absolute agony, straining something horrible, pulse heavy in his length, so fucking _close_ until Bucky finds him, knows him, and slides home one more time:

“ _God_.”

And Steve comes harder than he thinks even _his_ body was made to hold, and the last bit of his awareness of anything is the hot spill of Bucky across his stomach, up to his chest, new dangerous heat against the aching buds of his nipples and he drops, hard, against the bed: sinks low.

All that is, for the moment that follows—for so many moments that follow—is the way that the both of them breathe.

“I _always_ knew what was good for me,” Steve finally finds his voice again, the niggling in him between his strung-out heart and his wasted lungs forcing the words to be heard. “You know that, you gotta _know_ that.” 

And Bucky’s sprawled on top of Steve once more, tight enough that Steve can measure his heartbeat as it calms, and so he feels when it trips at those words, around the sound that wrenches wet and desperate, a sob and a need from Bucky’s throat that only makes Steve press him closer, wrap his arms still weak with his release but determined as hell around Bucky, enfolding him.

“And one day,” he breathes against Bucky’s matted hair; “one day, I’m gonna make you _see_ it.”

Bucky sighs into Steve’s skin, and it takes a moment for the buzz still fresh in Steve’s flesh to register the persistent press of Bucky’s lips along every line and dip Bucky can reach without dislodging Steve’s hand stroking across his head.

“I love you so much I’m blind with it,” Bucky murmurs into him, presses open-mouthed against his body for all of time and space to know. “I’m dumb for it, I,” he kisses long against the line of Steve’s sternum. 

“You are my _heart_ , Steve, I meant that with every breath I’ve got, stolen or given, frozen or warm. Every one of ‘em.” Bucky bows forward into the crook of Steve’s neck and breathes as true as the world can stand:

“I _mean_ that.”

And maybe Steve’s heart fucking soars, making his eyes fucking stream out pure feeling, drop love and life and salt and need onto Bucky’s hair as Steve pressed his own lips to the crown of his forehead as he breathes out, shaky and damp:

“Sap.”

“Happy to be. _Proud_ to be,” Bucky slides his chin up, glances up through tear-matted lashes of his own. “If it means you, if it means I…”

And Bucky raises up fully, then; straddles Steve and frames his face in his hands and studies him for a moment, sorrow and love clear in the gaze; absolute devotion making Steve’s heart feel light and pure understanding making his soul feel bare.

“I need you to know,” Bucky says, suddenly slow and tired, almost: suddenly stripped to his own bare-bones. “I need you to know, and believe, that I’m not going anywhere.” 

Steve’s heart jumps at the comprehension, the seeing through-and-into him those words betray, because Steve’s not strong. He said so.

Steve’s fucking _terrified_ he’ll lose this all again if he dares to believe in it with everything, and god. _God_.

He _needs_ to believe in it. With _everything_.

“I need you to know that this heart of yours, of _ours_ ,” and Bucky’s left hand settles over the now-frantic pounding like armor, like promise: “is safe, and _you’re_ safe, and I love you something horrible, Stevie, something wonderful, something like the only good thing in the world, like, I,” Bucky says like it’s the reason he knows his own name, and Steve doesn’t like to think it, but maybe, just maybe: it is.

“I didn’t know you were hurting that bad, baby,” Bucky whispers, and Steve moans, unexpectedly, because Bucky sees him. Steve had gotten used to not being seen, for his act being taken for truth, for the false reputation for honesty serving as a shade to kept drawn around the way he was bleeding, always bleeding.

But Bucky, as he always had: Bucky _sees_ him.

Steve trembles, but Bucky’s hand stays firm upon his chest.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Bucky leans to kiss him, hard and full of feeling, full of space for Steve to fall into and be enveloped, cared for: kept for always.

“I knew you were hurting but like this, like _this_ ,” Bucky shakes his head a little between kisses, pressing his mouth in each slow drag across Steve’s lip to the corners, never sacrificing contact.

“Steve, you took away your _life_ —”

“I didn’t.”

Bucky stills.

“I didn’t take away shit, Buck,” Steve tells him, cups his jaw and tries to will certitude through his hands, proof of what counts as life, and what doesn’t. 

“There wasn’t a life to take away,” Steve confesses, soft but honest in the way he always had: no pretense. Just him, for all he was and wasn’t. “So I was only coming back,” _to you_ goes unsaid, because it’s a given; “going quiet, so long as my life,” _so long as you, my whole life that is you_—

“So long as my life was quiet, too,” Steve whispers, and draws the pad of his thumb to dry Bucky’s tears, to trace Bucky’s parted lips. 

“I was coming _home_.”

Bucky blinks, his gaze tormented.

“I never wanted—”

“What? You never wanted me to love you this much? To hold you this close in me, to make you so much a part of why I bothered to keep breathing when breathing was too goddamn _hard_?” Steve challenges, the stretch of his fingers along the frame of Bucky’s face gripping tighter, needing him to understand this, where he’s seen and found and unearthed all the rest—because the rest, without this, doesn’t mean a damned thing.

“ _You’re_ what I learned was worthwhile in the world,” Steve tells him truly, and watches as new tears, different tears, gather in those blown-wide eyes. “Years, Buck. _Years_ ago, I learned that what mattered was made of you.” Steve draws him in, and tries to press all that single truth means into Bucky’s lips, tries to burn his soul into the touch between them both.

“You don’t ever unlearn something that real,” Steve vows; “I wouldn’t ever _want_ to.”

“Stevie,” Bucky chokes out, tone pleading, breaking around his name. “You can’t make your life about me, you,” Bucky swallows hard; “you _can’t_ —”

“Too fuckin’ late,” Steve says, and he smiles, goddamnit, because that fact is all the joy and love and good he knows. That fact is why the world still stands. “And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky says, but it’s tearful, there’s a catch in it that’s a laugh and a sob and it’s music that seeps into the way Steve’s blood seeks to move. “You, you’re,” Bucky tries to start, tries to find words but he knows as well as Steve knows: there’s only one thing for this, in this—only one way to say _this_ :

“God, you’re _everything_.”

And they’re broken, in their ways. They’re battered and bruised and cold in places that might never learn how to hold heat again; they’re scared and they’re small and strong and weak and a mess, they’re a _mess_ , but they’re in love, and it’s enough, and they’re wounded, but it’s okay. It’s okay, because between them, they’ve got a heart that beats, and Steve slips down Bucky’s body so that his ear fits to Bucky’s chest and when they breathe they hold tight to one another. When they breathe, they know that the sum of what exists doesn’t shy from the hard parts. The whole of all things they are means the _whole_ , all sides; whatever’s in between.

Because _every thing_ isn’t a notion that they’ve ever done by halves.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
